Hi fellow SEND-ers,

At the beginning of April Bertha and I, together with Ted Szymczak, travelled to Spain and facilitated another Coaching Workshop. The workshop was full, with 24 participants from six different mission agencies, serving in six different countries. I was particularly encouraged by how enthusiastically these participants discussed the application of these coaching skills to church planting, member care, MK schooling and mobilization. This three-day training has now been completed by 67 people within SEND, but this was the first time that we conducted the training in Europe.

Together with those who have completed the Core Coaching Skills Certificate program (60 hours of training), I count about 85 people in SEND that have a minimum of three days of training in coaching. If you would like a coach, we should be able to find one available! Send me an email if you would like to be coached. It does not have to be a long commitment. You can benefit from just a one-time coaching call (1 hour long) or ask to be coached for a month (2 calls) or two (4 calls). And for SEND missionaries, it is free!

In the past year of coaching first-term missionaries in MOP-Recap (Member Orientation Program under pressure), we have received some very positive feedback on the value of coaching. Each of our participants in MOP-Recap are assigned a coach for three months who walks with them through a review and application of some key topics that they learned in MOP. In their evaluations, the majority of these first-termers have said they really appreciated the coaching, and will definitely want to be coached in the future. This orientation to coaching was one of our goals of MOP-Recap and we are very pleased with the response!

MOP-Recap is still in a trial period, and we are making course corrections as we go along. One of our latest discoveries about MOP-Recap has been that we need to provide our coaches with more resources and guidelines in what to do if their coachees need more help than what coaching can provide. At the next Directors' Council in November, we will assess MOP-Recap's effectiveness in achieving its desired outcomes. But trainers from other missions are already looking at the MOP-Recap model as a best practice in missionary training. They particularly appreciate the way that the pre-field training is being intentionally coordinated and reinforced with on-field coaching.

I often receive email requests from SEND missionaries for information about resources that are available on the SEND U wiki. I recognize that the wiki is large (presently 219 pages and growing). It could be better organized, and we are working on that. But we do have a search bar on every page in the top left hand corner that will often help you find what you are looking for. On the home page, I have now also installed a Google Custom Search bar that is even more powerful, and will help you find what you are looking for more quickly and will even include “hits” from the SEND U blog. Try it out.

Keep learning,

Ken
Ken Guenther
SENDU Director
living in Kiev, Ukraine

Email Ken
SEND U blog:https://sendublog.com/
SEND U wiki: https://senduwiki.org